Catharsis is one of humanity's oldest concepts in examination of art.
When asking why art matters, why we care about this thing that isn't productive in any traditional sense,
it's often our first line of defense.
Aristotle defined catharsis as a way of releasing negative emotions safely,
to purge the sorrow or fear that builds up in us by watching a tragedy or viewing a dramatized act of horror.
But it's always been couched in the language of watching; of being a passive observer. So today we have to ask ourselves:
What does catharsis mean in games? Where you don't just watch, but do?
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The catharsis of doing is separate from the catharsis of watching.
There's a different kind of catharsis that comes from beating a difficult boss in Dark Souls,
or finally overcoming that impossible level in cuphead, and it's a type of catharsis that can't be delivered on in film or TV
It's a modern kind of catharsis. A catharsis necessary in a world so big that sometimes it's hard to see personal triumph.
The act of overcoming can serve as a purgative for the ever building sense that the world is out of our control,
or that feeling of powerlessness that sometimes comes with being one small piece of a much larger machine -
A machine that may not listen to your thoughts or even care about your ideas.
Of course, this doesn't get to the root cause of those frustrations and doesn't serve as a cure.
Rather, it serves as a simulacrum of those situations and feelings,
much in the way a tragic film serves as a simulacrum for our own personal tragedies and disappointments.
But in doing so, it can also act as a proxy that lets us express or at least fully experience those emotions
in ways we don't let ourselves in our day to day lives.
There's also a unique catharsis to deciding.
It's fundamentally different to watch a character on a screen choose revenge over mercy,
than to have to make that choice yourself, even in a simulated environment
It both satisfies a craving we have for this type of agency in our off-screen lives
AND brings our choices into sharp focus
Having to pull a trigger yourself raises a thousand more questions
than watching someone else do it
and it forces you on some level to ask
COULD I DO THIS?
and to experience at least in part the emotional repercussions for doing so.
Which leads us to our next point:
Only games can bring us REGRET.
Books, film, and television can never present us the opportunity to say
"I wish I hadn't done that," to say "I want to go back."
"I want to make a different choice." And this may sound like a terrible thing.
But by providing us a totally safe environment to have that experience in
One where our decisions and our regrets don't actually have to come at the cost of other human beings
It can help us better understand who we are and come to the necessary catharsis of facing our own personal regrets.
It can aid us, both in living with our choices,
and getting us to think about and learn from them
rather than simply rejecting our regrets outright because of their inherent painful nature.
In doing though, games provide us with a dilemma.
They are much more proximal, much closer to our real experience than a film or a novel.
Which means that they act on us more directly
Therefore they have the potential to have an inverse cathartic effect.
Rather than allowing us to safely experience and process some of these emotions, they can add to the well of them.
The catharsis that comes from the small personal triumphs of crushing a boss or dominating in a game also opens up the possibility of
adding to that well of rage and frustration.
If you don't achieve your triumph, if you don't ever have that moment of success you're on some level turning to the game for,
it can compound all of those unprocessed negative emotions,
built up during your out of game life,
and unlike a more linear medium where we can just write in a win for the heroes,
a climactic victory or a moment of ultimate success,
in games, we just can't guarantee that.
Thus that feeling of being stuck or powerless that we hope to alleviate through our in-game experiences
can become compounded when we're stuck in our games too.
When we can't win a match no matter how hard we try.
And personally,
I think this is where a lot of the negative behavior surrounding games comes from.
People not even realizing that they're coming to their games on some level seeking a release,
a lightening of the weight in their lives,
and then being denied it.
And this danger is equally real for choices and regrets
If you leave a game upset or truly sad about the choices you made
sometimes, that's not processing them. Sometimes that's just carrying them into the real world.
If you find something you did in a game is really negatively affecting your mood
and making you curt with the people around you,
then it's important to take a step back,
and remember that the thing you regret only happened in a game. Good games helped us do this naturally.
Subconsciously, so as to help us process rather than add to our regrets.
But sometimes we just have to remember to do it for ourselves.
And this doesn't mean that games can't provide traditional catharsis as well.
You've probably seen a cutscene that's moved you. or listened to a line of dialogue that nearly brought you to tears,
but as we play games, and as we build them, we have to remember that there's another layer here,
a catharsis of doing, which is incredibly powerful. And we have to be careful that we're using it well,
that we're actually thinking about how we're using it in our games. Because when we can use it right,
we open up a whole new avenue, a whole new way to heal with art.
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